Phoenix shook his head. “I called you first. Do you want to do this on the phone or in person?”
“Phone,” I said through my clenched jaw. In person, I might kill him if he didn’t have the right answers. Who was I kidding? I would rip him apart with my bare hands before anyone could stop me if he said the wrong thing.
Phoenix shot Keegan a stern look. “What you hear in this room cannot be repeated. Do you understand?”
She nodded and met his eyes. “Yes, sir. I understand.”
Phoenix dialed and placed the phone on speaker. When Boar answered, Phoenix got right to the point. “You got a property out on Cold Creek Rd?”
“Yeah, what about it?”
“Who lives there?” Phoenix asked, though it wasn’t a question.
“Phoenix, man, there’s no need for an interrogation. Tell me what the problem is, and I’ll tell you what I know,” Boar replied, sounding a little put off by Phoenix’s approach.
“Your Old Lady picked up my Road Captain and my Enforcer’s Old Lady last week on the side of the road and brought them back to Croftridge. I don’t know how much she told you, but they’d been kidnapped and held in a house hidden in the woods out there. That house is on your property and connects to your house by an underground mine shaft,” Phoenix explained.
“What? How’d you find that out? I own the damn thing, and I had no idea,” he said, blatantly sounding confused.
“A resident computer whiz found a map of the coal mine,” Phoenix answered, smirking at Keegan.
“What do you need from me?” Boar asked.
“Do you live there or know who does?”
“I don’t live there. I inherited the place when my father died. Since then, it’s always been a rental property,” he explained. “The current tenant is a man in his 30’s. Can’t remember what his name is. Oh, hell, I just remembered something, hang on a second.” We heard him move away from the phone and call for Shannon. They exchanged a few words before he came back to the phone. “Sorry about that. Shannon was on her way out to the rental house to see why he hadn’t paid his rent when she found Shaker on the side of the road. I’d forgotten about that and just asked her if she’d been out there to get the rent. She hasn’t, so I’m going to have to ride out there. You fellas want to tag along?”
I didn’t hesitate to give a sharp nod to Phoenix. “Indeed, we do. It’ll just be three of us. We’ll head that way now.”
“Grab Shaker and let’s roll. You three ladies stay put and stay out of trouble. We’ll be back in a few hours,” Phoenix ordered. He kissed the hell out of Annabelle and strolled out the front door. I gave Harper a quick peck and followed him.
We met Boar outside the gates of his clubhouse. Even though we were friendly with his club, it wasn’t kosher for us to roll onto his turf sporting our colors. Boar pulled out of the gates and led the way to his rental property.
He turned onto what I thought was a gravel road but turned out to be a long driveway. The house was tucked back behind a copse of trees, not visible from the street. Pulling up in front of the house, I could immediately sense something was off.
Boar rang the doorbell and knocked on the door several times. After a few minutes with no answer, he walked around to the back of the house and pressed his face to a window. “I haven’t heard from my tenant in several weeks, and I’m going to exercise my right as the landlord to do a welfare check,” Boar announced, producing a key from his pocket.
Once inside, it didn’t take long to figure out Boar’s tenant was long gone. “What was this guy’s name?” I asked.
Boar snorted. “Ivan Ceven.”
“Shall we check out the mine shaft?” Shaker asked.
“Sure, if we can find it,” Boar offered.
“I don’t even know what we’re looking for,” I added.
After thoroughly searching the house, Phoenix relented and called Keegan. Comparing the map of the mine to the blueprints of the house, she suggested we look outside near the southwest corner of the property. I pulled up the compass app on my phone and used it to guide us southwest. We found a large shed hidden behind a wall of trees.
We pulled the doors open to find a set of steep stairs. Using flashlights, we carefully descended to the bottom. I slowly rotated, shining my light along the walls. I froze when I saw it. “Holy shit,” I uttered. The other three turned and remarked with similar statements of disbelief. In front of us was a bona fide mine shaft, complete with a waiting mine cart.
“You think this thing works?” I asked.
“I have no idea, brother,” Phoenix mumbled.
“Ah-ha,” Boar exclaimed, seconds before we were illuminated with fluorescent lights. He smiled proudly. “I found a breaker.”
Shaker mumbled, “That’s how she did it.”